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Bill shares his thoughts on the release of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails and what the political fallout will be. Then Bill dives into the Trump economy with Steve Moore and they discuss whether we’ll ever see three or four percent economic growth again. Are North Korea’s latest missile launches an attempt – aided by China – to test the strength of the Trump administration? Brian Kennedy explains what’s going on with North Korea and China and how Pres. Trump should respond.
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That was great how you read Ricochet comments at the beginning.
I thought your assessment of the Don Jr nontroversy was good. Democrats don’t care at all about Russia. They’re just grasping at straws. They also don’t care about involvement in American elections from overseas entities.
Bill Clinton took millions of dollars from the Chinese in the 1990s, and then made trade policy that helped the Chinese. Right? Didn’t that happen? Someone help me out here. It was crazy dodgy.
And Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign took donations from overseas. This is not in question: the campaign had to pay a huge fine after the election. They actually changed part of the form on the donation page so that the address a donor entered didn’t have to match the address of the credit card account holder. This allowed people in other countries to donate by entering bogus American addresses.
Thank you, Bill, for quoting my comment as the first one you delved into. I am honored.
Actually, I do believe that, given the choice, Trump was the right choice. I don’t regret my non-vote for either, but the right one did prevail. I am still disappointed that you fail to see that Donald Trump is hurting our country, and his own cause, by behaving in this manner. But I do still believe you are one of the finest men to come out of Washington, and welcome you to Ricochet. You are a fine addition. My best to Mrs. Bennett!!
I also think it was very nice for Mr. Bennett to read the Ricochet comments with his team.
I get the Clinton/Trump pragmatism per the 2016 election that he mentioned here, even though I stand by all the original feelings/thoughts that I posted in the previous podcast’s response thread about why I have long felt confused by this particular commentator to whom I listened religiously for as long as I think he was in the Atlanta market…. I am very much a Georgia girl, you see, which was one of the reasons why Bennett had long appealed to me. (He had the good sense to marry into a Southern family.)
Having said that, I greatly appreciated Bill’s delving into the ethics of Trump Jr. “loving” the idea of a Russian meeting to get some dirt without a blanket dismissal of such actions as “just fine” because “Clinton would do it.” The “rightness” of the action was explored in the back-and-forth dialogue rather than rationalized away as irrelevant or not worthy of deeper thought.
I also think if this is all there is to that story, Bill was quite right saying that Democrats will “overplay” their political hand despite the bad optics.
Finally, I want to say none of the comments I have ever made about Bill Bennett have been made with any rancor. He just kept me company so often while I cooked in my kitchen or drove kids around or did the thousand other things that I did that I felt… well… It’s silly, but he seemed more real to me than most people on the radio. I was surprised by some of his positions.
I wish him well, and I’m happy his voice has been added to the line up.
Don Jr took that meeting because he wanted his father to win. Leftists and NeverTrumpers are upset because they wanted Trump to lose. It’s as simple as that. What Don Jr did was not illegal and was not unethical and was not amateurish. He took a meeting with someone who said she had opposition research on Clinton. NeverTrumpers don’t like that because they wanted Clinton to win.
I think the first sentence is correct, and I also agree that there is nothing about the meeting that seems illegal, but just to clarify your perspective… Are you saying here that Bill Bennett is a “Leftist” or a “NeverTrumper” who “wanted Clinton to win”?
He says in this podcast: “[Regardless of what took place here] if you wanted it to happen, you wanted it to happen. If you wanted to collude, you wanted to collude. And that’s a problem… It is inescapable that this was a mistake. This was political malpractice of a serious sort, and it’s a double mistake because the story was changing and denials were still going on…”
I appreciate that he’s honest about this, and–again–he’s also absolutely correct that Democrats are prone to massive overreach, but people on the right lose major credibility when they try to dismiss real problems by saying the people who notice them “don’t like that [only] because….”
Last time I checked, Bill Bennett voted for Donald Trump.
Well, I don’t see any real problem in Don Jr’s meeting, other than that the attorney didn’t deliver the goods.
Bill said he is happy with Trump so far.
This is not true at all. Naturally, I can only speak for myself. Unlike you, I do not have the arrogance to presume I knew what is in the hearts of fellow Americans. And if you do not stop calling Trump-Skeptics Never-Trumpers, I am going to start calling people like you Trump fanatics. You will follow this man anywhere, and make apologies for whatever he does. I want the best for America, and Trump is not it – despite the good he has done. I never wanted Hilary to win. You are shameful!
Terrific post, Lois, per usual. I don’t know much about the South. But, judging by you and Mrs. Bennett, Southern women are indeed something special! :-)
Great, @max!
Then you can see quite plainly that someone who likes Trump and is “happy with Trump so far” can criticize an action from the former Trump campaign while not wanting Hillary Clinton to be president.
While you don’t have a problem with the meeting because you don’t understand why it was wrong or why it would have been a thousand times worse now if he had actually gotten something from the attorney, a bonafide Trump supporter characterizes the meeting as “political malpractice of a serious sort.”
Why? Because it was. Even with all the qualifiers of changing intensity of focus on “Russian collusion.” When you say it wasn’t, you are–at best–being solipsistic. You are at worst being sycophantic. You are certainly not being helpful to the president’s cause.
I’m not your enemy when I tell you this truth.
When Bill Bennett–or anyone else–supports President Trump’s presidency–even passionately supports Trump’s presidency as if the dude is a coming of a second George Washington–while being honest about those problems that truly exist when they arise, he becomes more credible.
Credibility is very, very important.
Since this does not accurately describe me, it would not bother me if you called me that.
I said Leftists and NeverTrumpers were upset because they wanted Hillary to win. That leaves a lot of room for other people to be upset for other reasons. Leftists and NEverTrumpers don’t make up all of America….
The first is a large group, and I agree with you that they would have preferred Hillary Clinton as president. Whether one likes it or not, the Left also controls many institutions in the United States that craft messaging that will reach pretty much “all of America.”
Now, I don’t think in martial terms because I do not accept the “civil war” paradigm that many on the Left and many Trump supporters use, but if I did, late disclosures of a meeting such as the one Don Jr had are, thereby, equivalent to leaving a small cannon on the field for the other army to turn against the army Trump supports.
That is one reason why the late disclosure of the meeting after months of denials that any meeting at all of any sort with any Russian with the intent of any collusion is political malpractice and bad.
The irony with the whole “NeverTrumper” thing–the insistence that such a group still exists in any meaningful number or that all voters who were not comfortable with Trump preferred/prefer Clinton–is that the president needs more supporters.
Ask yourself this question. (Again, I’m using martial language as an analogy only.)
If you were in a war and you needed recruits, would it be easier for you to find them amidst people who have closely identified with your own nation at some point in the past? Or would you look for recruits amidst those people who have never identified with your nation but always fought against it? How about the people who have never cared enough to engage with either nation fighting? Do you look to those guys–who hear the Leftist cannons, btw, on a daily basis–and ask them to jump into your fight?
Let’s say you line up all the people who once identified with your nation and shot them in the face…. Or even just hunted them down and publicly (continually) flogged them?
How will people from the neutral group view your cause? In a positive way?
If they get a rather negative impression from the shooting/flogging, how are you THEN going to grow support for your side?
I don’t know either.
That’s a problem, too.
If we’re going with the martial analogy then NeverTrumpers are not neutral, they are people who gave support to the enemy. (In the analogy.)
Okay. Then you feel justified to shoot them in the face? Flog them on a daily basis? Push them completely out of your ranks?
That’s fine, but when you have continual purges of those you see as some form of perpetual collaborators with your enemy–those who are designated as such even when they are only pointing out the obvious–you’re going to have appreciable attrition of your troops, which is a poor recruitment strategy for your cause.
At the very least, it’s a wee short-sighted when your ultimate battleground is going to be within a democratic republic.
So…
Good luck with that, but understand that this path has the potential to make 2016 pretty pyrrhic.
I think, to his credit, Bill Bennett understands this.
You claim you are not a Trump-fanatic, but then continue to speak like one.
People who continue to use this phrase, to my mind, are not interested in having a meaningful discussion. They simply want to keep engaging in some silly fight, in order to prove… What? That they incapable of that meaningful discussion, and that they are quite comfortable acting like children, and impugning people’s motive – which is exactly what the left does.
Most people, who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump (like me) did not want Hilary either. I did not vote for her. We actually thought she was going to win, and were very upset with that. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to vote for a man who had the kind of character flaws Trump had.
I live in New Jersey, for example. No matter how I voted, Hilary was going to carry this state. That was reality. It turns out that, while Hilary carried my state, she didn’t win after all – which I am glad about.
But, because I am glad that Trump won should not preclude me from pointing out the things he is doing wrong. If more people were like me (and like Jonah, and Charles, and Bill, and a thousand others), Trump might get the message, and start acting like a grown-up. Instead he has these rabid followers, who will not see the harm he is doing. That guy Charlie, from the Washington Times (forgive me, I forget his last name) says that Trump is a showman, and that this is a good thing. Now, I certainly believe in having fun, but I don’t want a showman as President. This is not a circus. I want a grownup, who will point out our greatness as a nation, and pledge to continue it.
A deeper problem with the Russia meeting is that Trump Sr put family members in campaign leadership positions. This is almost always an error in politics. Family members don’t normally have good political judgement, and if they goof up, they are hard to fire. Jared Kushner, another family member, participated in this meeting.
In this case, Paul Manafort, who was the political expert with decades of experience, also went along with this meeting. He should have know better, but he’s already dirty with the Russians. This brings up another deeper problem which is that Trump Sr is, at best, naive about Russia. He set a tone in the campaign that Russia in not an adversary, and hired people who were connected with Russia.
I think Trump needs to do four things about this. The first was discussed in the podcast which is find out all of the Russia ties and be open about them. Second, stop commenting on the investigation, such as not even jokingly make comments about taping or asking the FBI if he is under investigation. This just makes him look guilty. Third, remove all family members from any political positions, especially Kushner. Fourth, recognize and act like Russia is an enemy of the US. He has already started down this path, such as bombing the Russian ally Syria’s air base after the chemical attack. And Trump was critical of Russia in the Warsaw speech.
All of that seems fair to me. It is, after all, a political question.
I don’t think anything shows a criminal act was committed here. Certainly there was nothing “treasonous.” (That’s the predictable overreach Bennett predicts.)
You’ve offered political advice.
I really don’t know what you mean about tone. And who are these people that were connected to Russia?
His behavior since being elected does not indicate he thinks Russia is not an adversary. He’s been increasing sanctions; he fired missiles at Russia’s client state, Syria; he’s selling missile defense to Poland; He’s strengthening NATO; he’s working to undercut Russia’s ability to export energy.
Yes, as far as I know, nothing is illegal. But it’s political disaster.
Paul Manafort is one person who’s connected to Russia. Michael Flynn is another.
It is certainly problematic. ;)
Neither of whom work for him. And these connections? What are they, exactly?
Come on, Max.
Ignoring the fact that one of these men was the administration’s first National Security Advisor and the other was Trump’s campaign manager at the time of the meeting is not doing the president any big favors.
This doesn’t mean that this revelation about this meeting is the horrible, big, terrible deal that Democrats are trying to make it. But it is a political problem, and it’s better to make sure any other “surprises” are out there and on the table so that the optics can’t be further exploited… whatever the substance of the event.
That just seems like… politics 101.
Stating an unrelated fact (“Manafort was the campaign manager in June 2016”) does not substantiate an assertion (“Manafort is one person who’s connected to Russia.”)
I know you know that Manafort has connections to Russia through his dealings in the Ukraine. These may not be nefarious at all, and I am not contending they are. But they exist. They can be exploited. And that’s related to why this is a question about politics.
In online comments one does not need to substantiate a statement that has been widely reported in the press. This is not a doctoral dissertation.
This is a sage offering. I think the reason Bennett, Prager, and others (such as my antagonists from various Podcast commentaries I have participated in) are responding to the hyperventilating that the left always engages in. The point they are missing is that I – and people who agree with me – am the one who is offering advice on how Trump can save his presidency, and get on with doing the things people elected him to do. As I observed on another venue, this is such a wasted opportunity!
My opinion is that, while the anti-Trump Left and the NeverTrump Right hyperventilate, Trump is getting on with doing the things people elected him to do. What a great opportunity!
I am sorry but I think you are just plain wrong. We need more judges; we need more people to fill out the offices; and we need legislation, to undo the harm that the left has done. He is squandering this opportunity, by picking fights that we do not need to have. He should ignore people like Mica and Joe. A bigger man would. Reagan did.
Very possible.
He’s nominated a bunch.
Not sure I agree. Don’t we want government to be smaller?
Well, sure, but that’s for Congress. The executive can’t legislate.
Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man. I don’t see him picking fights. I see him responding to attacks on him. Why should he ignore Mika and Joe and let them control the narrative?
There was no twitter then.